Climate Change > Consensus
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Written By: James M. Taylor
Publication date: 04/01/2010
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
A majority of broadcast meteorologists are skeptical of alarmist global warming claims and find the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change untrustworthy, reports a new survey from the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication.

Funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, George Mason researchers surveyed all broadcast television member of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) and the National Weather Association (NWA). To receive an AMS seal of approval members are required to have a degree in meteorology. To receive an NWA seal of approval members must demonstrate sound meteorological knowledge in a written examination and be approved by fellow broadcast meteorologists. Of the 571 broadcast meteorologists surveyed, 55 percent held an AMS seal of approval and 33 percent held an NWA seal of approval.

Environment > Climate: Climategate
Environment > Climate: Realists
Environment > Climate: Science
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Written By: Paul Chesser
Publication date: 02/24/2010
Publisher: The Washington Times
The global-warming industry is getting several bailouts, none of which it wants. Last week, three major corporations - Conoco/Phillips, BP and Caterpillar - bailed out on the U.S. Climate Action Partnership lobbyist collaboration. Arizona bailed on the Western Climate Initiative (WCI) cap-and-trade plan. The Utah House presumably wants to bail on WCI, too, because it overwhelmingly passed a resolution requesting the Environmental Protection Agency to bail on its planned regulation of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act. Texas and Virginia also want the nation's top environmental regulator to cease and desist.

On Thursday, the Netherlands' Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, resigned. The guru of global-warming diplomacy, after a disastrous December summit in Copenhagen did not produce an international agreement on greenhouse gas reduction, favored bailing over failing.

"I saw him at the airport after Copenhagen," said Jake Schmidt, a climate expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council, to Associated Press. "He was tired, worn out." The summit "clearly took a toll on him."

This followed an admission a few weeks ago by Phil Jones, former University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit director, that he had suicidal thoughts over his role in the Climategate scandal.

On behalf of climate realists everywhere, I beg: Spare us the beleaguered scientists story line. The collapse of the hollow cause they advocated, which spurred a sector bubble probably larger than the 1990s Internet craze and the last decade's real estate speculation combined, was inevitable. Billions of dollars - much of it belonging to taxpayers - were poured into climate-related research and heavily subsidized "green" ventures because of the hype.

Over the same period, global-warming skeptics (including respected scientists and policy scholars) warned repeatedly that there was no authoritative, unified view behind climate catastrophism. But rather than heeding their cautions, large news organizations (and the activist Society of Environmental Journalists) joined environmental harassment groups in marginalizing them. They equated the doubters with disbelievers of tobacco's harm, the moon landing and a spherical earth - you know, crackpots.

Had the media scrutinized the reports of the once-heralded U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rather than listening to the environoia movement, they would have discovered the fragile ceramics were on the alarmists' shelf. It has only taken a few curious bloggers and some journalists from the United Kingdom to finally scrutinize the IPCC's footnotes, which represented the purportedly rigorous scientific study that undergirded the report's conclusions.

What they found beneath the IPCC surface is an error-laden swamp of green groups' promotional materials and amateur compositions by college students instead of the "peer-reviewed" research alarmists had claimed. Climategate spurred subsequent daughter controversies that included "Glaciergate" (Himalayan ice not eroding as quickly as claimed), "Amazongate" (rain forests are suffering from logging, not climate, according to a World Wildlife Fund report) and "Africagate" (a Canadian environmentalist think tank said crop yields would be cut in half because of increasing temperatures). The barrage of revelations has prevented the Big Environment industrial-media complex from controlling the story line.

Climategate data-fudger Michael Mann, the scientist at Penn State University known for the "hockey stick" temperature chart, which rewrote history by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period, last week bemoaned this new discourse on global warming. In an interview with the Web site the Benshi, he whined about "an organized, well-funded effort to discredit" the "scientific community," which he said was driven by the fossil-fuel industry. He accused climate realists of conducting "smear campaigns run against scientists for the sole purpose of discrediting them, so as to discredit the science."

Michael should Mann up. Whatever smudges appear on the reputations of warmism-promoting scientists have been applied by themselves. After all, the skeptics aren't the ones who made up, fudged or twisted data or who employed dubious and biased sources as the foundation for their predictions of calamity. And the alarmists had (and still do) a massive funding advantage, amplified by their colleagues at the major news organizations, which helped keep the messaging winds at their backs. Grammies, Oscars and Nobels were part of their rewards.

But now we have another climate bailout. Though the U.S. media is not hunting down the IPCC fallacies the way their British counterparts are, at the same time, they do not defend global-warming proponents the way they once did. They once championed the cause with vigor, but now a lot of big-city journalists have gone mute about the whole thing.

A suggestion to regain the attention: The scientists should undertake a Mark McGwire/Tiger Woods-like apology campaign. Only then can they start on the road to recovery and restore their lost reputations.

Environment & Climate News > August 2008
Environment > Climate: Consensus
Environment > Climate: Realists
Environment > Climate: Science
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Written By: Peter Risdon
Published In: Environment & Climate News > August 2008
Publication date: 08/01/2008
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
Despite what many global warming alarmists assert in the media, there are many articles in the world's leading science publications contradicting the assertion that "the debate is over" about global warming. These articles destroy the illusion that there is a "consensus" among scientists about the causes of global warming. The following is the second of a three-part list of many such articles. Compiled by Peter Risdon.
'Hockey Stick'

Are you really pulling up articles by the Heartland Institute to support your argument? Good grief, you really have completely discredited yourself now! They are notorious mis-representers of scientific research (see PZ Myers thoughts on them!). If you read the actual articles cited, then it is likely that they do not actually support the view put forward by the Heartland Institute; there have been several instances of scientists complaining about the misinterpretation of their research by this group, or being listed as climate change deniers, when they are no such thing. They do have a very bad habit of cherrypicking; a casual reading of the articles titles shows that most are probably not directly contradictory to current climate change theory ( do you actually understand what the word theory means in a scientific context?). Even if all the cited articles did support their view, then there are many, many times more contradicting them.

Peter Risdon is a geologist, not a climatologist, and seems to mainly work for the oil industry.

H Sterling Burnett is a self-styled "expert" on environmental issues and gun control (no qualifications to support this), a juxtaposition which should tell you a lot about his political outlook, and his think tank (NCPA) is massively funded by the oil industry, particularly by Exxon-Mobil. He's a social scientist, not a real scientist of any sort.

James M Taylor is a lawyer, with no scientific qualification whatsoever.

The Federal government agency administrations in the US were dominated by climate deniers for most of the last three decades, so the idea that they have pressured scientists to promote it is simply nonsense; the US government (under Bush jnr) has actually edited government scientific papers to make them seem less certain on climate change.

Governments would love for all this to be wrong! It would get them off a very tricky hook. Why would they possibly want it to be true? Trust me, the UK government would also love this to all be a hoax. This is nonsense, and their allegations of funding interests are completely untrue. The opponents are mostly funded by denialists, and so are not disinterested, impartial observers; it is somewhat disingenuous for them to make these allegations. Most climate scientists will have a job regardless of the truth, or otherwise, of climate change theory. Classic case of projection!

The idea that anyone producing critical research is committing career suicide is also nonsense; denialists make a very good living! If you continually seek to publish poor science, then, yes, you will be ignored in the future, and may eventually lose your position. But you will get a cushy job with the Discovery Institute, the Heartland Institute or any other of the myriad industry bodies and think tanks that deny the science. Seriously, most of the sceptics and denialists in climate change retain their posts; their reputations may be dented, but so are those of evolution doubters and the openly religious in science. However, if they produce good work, then that will be accepted. Climate change proponents have also lost their jobs, by the way.

Scepticism is a valuable and intrinsic part of science. We constantly challenge accepted truth. Many are sceptical of specific results, aspects of methodology, modelling processes and asumptions etc. I am amongst them in some respects. Being sceptical is not the same as denialism. Sceptics questioning aspects of current theory is to be expected, welcomed (as long as it is evidence-based), but does not, in and of itself, deny the validity of the basic hypothesis; we do this in all fields of science! That does not mean we doubt the essential validity of all science.

Politicians doing it to further their careers? Don't think so! Poll after poll show that the public are sceptical, and that the environment is a priority for relatively few. As George W Bush showed, the populist approach is to deny it and to tell the public not to worry, yet even he was eventually forced, by the weight of evidence, to admit that it was based in fact.

Again you are relying on the Heartland Institute and their spokespeople for information. They are funded by big polluters and energy producers. Why would you possibly regard this as a credible source?

They state 31000 scientists signed their petition. What proportion of the total in the US does this represent? What kind of scientists are they? How many have relevant experience or qualifications? How many of the NAS fellows support that?

Geologists are not climatologists, and many are linked to the oil industry! TV weathermen are not research scientists. Only one person in this video, as far as I can remember, has any relevant qualification. Who funds him? Christopher Monckton has qualifications in classics and journalism, for goodness sake, and none in science! Come on, use your rational thinking and scepticism! Why would you trust these people more than the ones you so readily dismiss?

Climate change deniers are very clever propagandists. They use out-of -context quotations, selectively edited papers and half-truths to further their cause. Some genuinely believe what they are doing is right, including some scientists, but many are paid stooges, especially the Heartland Institute. You can not, and should not, take what they say in preference to respected scientific research institutes, and national academies.

Well, I stand corrected. My apologies, Doone. For almost 6 months I believed them........good thing that I came across this atheist forum. If not, I would still be running around like a headless chicken, with misguided informations, wondering as to why scientists are raising such an alarm.
Thanks, padre! ^^